Dear Voornaam,

I hope you are well.

It’s hard to believe that we are nearing the end of 2024. The last quarter was an important one for Cancer Grand Challenges: we welcomed a new chair of our Scientific Committee, as well as a number of new committee members; we continued to see fantastic progress across our portfolio of teams, and many outstanding publications; and we began sharing the impact stories of our first round of funded teams as they draw to a close.

Excitingly, we have also just begun the consultation process for the next round of Cancer Grand Challenges, and are preparing to announce the new challenges in March 2025. We have been convening researchers and advocates in a series of think tanks, designed to spark debate around the most important challenges in cancer research right now. We’re grateful to all of the participants for their time and expertise, and to Cancer Research UK’s partners INCa, The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and AECC for co-hosting some of these events. Make sure you keep an eye on our X and LinkedIn for reflections from some of the attendees.

Finally, I also want to congratulate those in our community who have been recognised for their outstanding scientific contributions over the last quarter.

I hope you will enjoy reading about our Cancer Grand Challenges and feel inspired by the progress that our funded teams are making.

Best wishes,

David Scott
Director, Cancer Grand Challenges

Welcoming the new chair of the Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee

In August, we announced Professor Charlie Swanton as the incoming chair of our Scientific Committee.

Community

David Baker

Huge congratulations to David Baker of Cancer Grand Challenges team MATCHMAKERS, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 for computational protein design!

In the last few months, a number of members of the Cancer Grand Challenges community were recognised for their incredible contributions to their fields. Congratulations to all:

• Howard Chang of team eDyNAmiC, who was awarded the 2024 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research

• James (Zhijan) Chen of team eDyNAmiC, who was awarded the 2024 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award

• Cigall Kadoch of team PROTECT, who was named Laureate of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the field of life sciences

• Mike Hall, member of the Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee, who was awarded a Grand Medal by the Académie des Sciences in France

Team SAMBAI kick off meeting

In September, SAMBAI, one of our newest funded teams, came together for their kick off meeting. Led by Melissa Davis, the team is tackling our cancer inequities challenge and will strive to decode the factors that cause and influence disparate cancer outcomes in underserved populations of African descent.

Research highlights

The impact of our first round of funded teams

As their funding comes to an end after seven years, we’re telling the impact stories of our first round of funded teams — IMAXT, Rosetta, PRECISION and Mutographs.

Patient advocacy

In August, the Cancer Grand Challenges Advocacy Panel welcomed a new member, Anya Shah. Anya is in her last year of university, pursuing a Master's in Narrative Medicine. She is also seeking to study to become a medical doctor in the next couple of years. Anya survived Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia at a very young age, and strongly believes in bringing research from bench to bedside.

Media highlights

• PharmaTimes, 24 September 2024: Cancer Grand Challenges launches global initiative to take on toughest problems

• The Health Foundation Podcast, 12 September 2024: Why are cancer rates rising among younger people? – with Kimmie Ng and Charles Swanton

• Medical Xpress, 4 September 2024: Menstrual cycle found to influence the spread of mutant cells in mammary tissue

• Men’s Health, 5 August 2024: Cancer Rates Are Rising in the Under-50s. Can the Trend Be Reversed?

• The Gates Foundation, 31 July 2024: The Ghanaian researcher who came home